Australian Lives
The Age
Saturday October 26, 2002
Rebecca Cartledge, Nunawading, Victoria
On Mondays Rebecca Cartledge's bed would be the scene of a weekly ritual. It involved Twisties and M&Ms, several 20-year-olds and a couple of 21-year-olds.
Bec's bed, it seems, was always the best place to watch television. Rebecca, 20, and her friends Jessica O'Donnell, Aleisha Desmond, Kate Bailey, and Jennifer Paizis spent hours there, watching The Secret Life of Us and Sex and the City. They also watched Reality Bites, a movie they had seen more than a 100 times.
Bec Cartledge adored hanging out with her friends. She loved school not for study but for her friends. She drank every Friday with her girlfriends at the ``Blackie" - the Blackburn Hotel - and spent carefree weekends away with the girls at Sorrento.
A feisty member of a Box Hill netball team, Bec was also second-in-charge of a Forest Hill cafe, where customers found her happy, outgoing and never rude.
She had a few quirks, Bec. She hated bananas, but loved banana cake. She was forever cooking cheese on toast. Bec was addicted, friends say, to every kind of cheese. And she would never let anyone else touch the orange snakes in a bag of lollies.
At the airport before her trip to Bali, Bec demanded to go to McDonald's - she loved the Fanta from there and was not sure if she would get the same overseas. She was even heard wondering if they had the same cheese in Bali. -- Melissa Fyfe
Jessica O'Donnell, Nunawading, Victoria
The blokes at the audio-visual distribution company were dismayed when Jessica O'Donnell said she was leaving. At a long lunch on her last day, they told her she was not just young and blonde, she was going places.
Smart and ambitious, Jessica left and headed for another company, which she thought would promote her faster.
But there was another, quite domestic, side to Jessica. She loved to sew and cook, often e-mailing favourite recipes to her father Gerard. She joked about writing an easy cookbook for guys who want to impress their girlfriends.
Jessica played the piano and listened to Eminem, Shakira and Pearl Jam. She liked to sing along to Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.
Friends say she had never been as happy as she was with her new boyfriend, Andrew Collins. She was worried she was neglecting her family by spending time with him and would ring her mother and apologise.
In August Jessica turned 21. For weeks she searched for the right thing to wear. She found a strapless top, a white frilly skirt and white high heels. She spent the night surrounded by her friends, glass of champagne in hand.
At the airport before leaving for Bali - their first trip overseas - Jessica and her housemate Rebecca Cartledge waved goodbye to their best friend, Aleisha Desmond. She was crying but they were laughing, telling her not to be stupid. ``They were ready to have the absolute time of their lives," says Aleisha. ``I told them both I loved them." -- Melissa Fyfe
Bob Marshall, Adelaide, South Australia
Bob Marshall was worried about the missing tracksuit tops. Big Bob, a former ruckman, played his last senior game for Sturt 40 years ago. Since then he made himself useful, as a doorkeeper, sprigger, room steward . . . anything the club wanted done.
He was a big, tough man and if trouble was brewing off the field, as it sometimes did after a game, he would wander over, knowing his presence would be enough.
He loved it: he loved the people and his link with the young men who played football.
``He was there when the club was at its lowest ebb," said his friend Doug Klar. ``Then, to see it win a grand final . . ."
On grand final day, Sunday, October 6, Bob was at Football Park just after midday. He was Sturt's property steward, in charge of equipment, jumpers, shorts and medical gear, making sure everything was in place for the players.
He would moan like hell but work damn hard, says Doug Klar. He would fuss around, making sure the players were comfortable, handing out chewing gum and complaining if a player came back for more. ``You've already had one," he'd growl, then hand over another.
Sturt went on to the ground as underdogs. They hadn't won a premiership for 26 years. After the game neither Bob nor anyone else could wipe the smile off their faces for days.
The only hitch was the missing clothing. Amid the euphoria, Bob had to go around collecting the tracksuit tops the players wore on to the ground and the jumpers and shorts worn during the game. He had no hope. Management had warned him that everything had to be returned or the players would be billed, but ``anyone who has played in premiership sides knows what it is to pinch jumpers and shorts," says Doug Klar, who was property steward before Bob.
The Thursday night before leaving for Bali, Bob rang Doug to tell him the bad news: the club was seven tracksuit tops short. Doug told him to forget it but Bob was still worried. ``When I get home," he said to Doug, ``I'll give you a buzz and we'll work out what to do about the ordering for next year". -- Penelope Debelle
Robert Thwaites, Gold Coast, Queensland
Robert Thwaites had a difficult birth. ``I remember the nurses putting a suction cap over his head to bring him into this world," said his father Geoff.
``When he was a baby, I'd take him to work with me. I had this coat and he would fit snugly in there like a kangaroo joey in its pouch, with his little head sticking out."
Geoff and his Indonesian-born wife Syam had big plans for their gifted 24-year-old son, who graduated earlier this year with a first-class honours degree in civil engineering and business from Brisbane's Griffith University. Robert was being primed to eventually take over his parents' oil construction company, and had moved to Jakarta, where the company was based.
Robert was a creature of habit, said his girlfriend Prue Mack. ``We'd go to the same restaurant, he'd order the same pasta dish, then we'd go and have cookies and cream," she said. ``It was a little ritual that he didn't like to vary."
His brother Ben said Robert was one of the most organised people he knew. ``Not long ago he read a book about what happens if you die tomorrow. When he read a book he was taken with, he would really get into the bones of that book. This particular book prompted him to write his eulogy.
``He was in Jakarta working on a plan for the rest of his life. He was doing a lot of soul-searching. He was that kind of person."
The family has established a fund for the victims of terrorists: PO box 359, Surfers Paradise, Queensland, 4217. -- Greg Roberts
Anthony Cachia, Reservoir, Victoria
Anthony Cachia loved his Holden Vectra. ``Yes," said his friend Tony Foale, ``he had a great deal of love for his car."
And he loved grand prix racing. He'd sit and watch it for hours. He'd go with his father to all four days at Albert Park.
But there was one thing the 32-year-old loved more than cars: his family. Family was bedrock for the Cachias - Charlie and Carmen, daughter Angela and Anthony.
Anthony, who lived with his parents in Reservoir, found his place when he became a chef at 17. Most recently, he worked at the All Seasons hotel in Little Bourke Street.
``As a chef you work pretty long, nasty hours," said Mr Foale. ``But Anthony was a very hard worker. He did long hard bursts of work and then went overseas on holiday."
His last trip to Thailand and Bali was a tonic for a broken heart, said his uncle, John Wills. He had not been lucky in love but wanted to settle down.
He'd sometimes go on holiday to Malta, his parents' birthplace. Mr Foale, who first met Anthony in grade five, went with him in the early 1990s. ``Anthony was very Australian but he put store in the fact that he had Maltese roots," Mr Foale said. ``He loved going back to see his grandparents, who he was very fond of, and his cousins. He has a lot of love for his family over there." -- Melissa Fyfe
Chloe Byron, North Bondi, New South Wales
When Chloe Byron was five, she wanted to learn how to ride a horse and do jumps like her big brother, Jared.
Her grandmother, Barb Cram, recalls: ``She was this tiny little thing and I put her up on this big horse with her helmet and she was concentrating so hard to follow the instructions."
When it was over, her grandmother told her: ``I'm so proud of you, Chloe. You were very brave."
Chloe replied: ``I really wasn't brave, Nan. I just kept all the scare inside me."
From that day on, her ``Nanny Barb" called her ``Little Eagle . . . because I thought she would fly high".
To her mother Tia she was known as ``Little Princess", and expected to be treated like one. She loved wearing lip gloss, dancing to Abba, shopping and bubble baths.
To her father David she was ``Baby Doll." He worshipped her, coaching her netball team, her basketball team and then taught her to surf on his Malibu.
Chloe, 15, was a year 9 student at St Brigidine Secondary College in Randwick, Sydney. On Wednesday nights, she slept over at Nanny Barb's house.
``It sounds silly, but we hung out like girlfriends," Mrs Cram said. ``Chloe could talk to anyone. She was ageless. When I got new glasses the other week, she said to me: `You are so cool, Nan.'
``I felt 10 feet tall having a teenager telling me that. She had her own room at my place and, like every teenager, after she left, it looked like a whirlwind had come through. I'd yell out to her `Bye, Little Eagle' and she'd turn and wave as she ran off to school." -- Ellen Connolly
Corey Paltridge, Perth, Western Australia
In the centre of the late-night throng in Bali's Sari Club was a beaming 20-year-old playing air guitar to AC/DC.
It was the first time Corey Paltridge was overseas without his family, but not the first time he was the centre of attention. He was on an end-of-season football trip with his club from suburban Kingsley, north of Perth.
His mother Pat takes comfort from the words of Corey's coach that of all the people in the Sari that night, Corey was having the best time.
Corey Paltridge gathered friends the way most people collect memories. He was open and welcoming to people and experience. With a friend he had begun a glazing business and not long ago joked with his big sister Kelly that he had invited more mates to his coming 21st birthday party than she had invited guests to her imminent wedding.
His three best mates have had themselves tattooed with the word Goose, his nickname derived from a favourite character in the movie Top Gun.
Corey Paltridge's 21st birthday party will go ahead as he had intended. Kelly says: ``If he thought we had missed out on a party, he would have been devastated." -- Ian Munro
Gayle Airlie, Sydney, New South Wales
She always wore bangles. She loved perfume. On her dressing table were 25 bottles of scent - always the newest, the latest. Gayle Airlie loved feminine things - shoes, champagne, and make-up to define her eyes. Her sons Ryan, 23, and Cameron, 20, and her daughter Ashleigh, 15, inherited those eyes.
Ashleigh remembers how beautiful her mother looked that night at the Sari Club in a new floral top, a three-quarter skirt and with her blonde hair blow-dried by Candace, her best friend's daughter.
Gayle had gone to Bali to relax. She was tired. She lived life to the full and worked long hours. She rose at 6 to go walking around Maroubra, in Sydney, with her friends, among them Geradine, Michelle and her sister Leanne. You had to be up at daybreak to beat the girls. Even in Bali, they would be up ``too early, walking for ages", said Ashleigh.
She trained at the Pagewood gym, worked at the Qantas check-in counter at Sydney Airport and kept up the family home. It was walk, work, gym, pick up Ashleigh from Brigidine College, cook dinner, drive to see her partner, Michael Sant, or her parents, Pat and Noel Minton, back home and bed by midnight.
Ryan says he is going to miss her most ``just sitting around the table, having a glass of red with her. Talking and laughing."
She had married Ian Airlie in 1976. They divorced, and she took several jobs at a time to better herself and earn more for the children. She was, say her children, ``a very, very good mother." -- Valerie Lawson
MEMORIES
Readers are invited to send their memories of a person they knew who died in Bali to bali@theage.com.au or by post to James Button, commissioning editor, c/- The Age, PO box 257C, Melbourne, 3001.
© 2002 The Age